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The Big Book of Multiple Choice, now with more choices!

God’s inerrant Word is getting a makeover yet again. The NIV “will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship,” apparently.

This is interesting. Many fundies cling like wet Kleenex to the original KJV, I suppose because they think English that sounds Shakespearean best conveys the gravitas God’s Word requires. What many believers seem to object to in the NIV are PC-ish edits making some passages more gender-neutral. For instance…

It was the TNIV that ushered in changes from “sons of God” to “children of God,” or “brothers” to “brothers and sisters.” In Genesis I, God created “human beings” in his own image instead of “man.”

I can see how this might be threatening to those kinds of fundamentalists who want the Bible to endorse a strictly patriarchal social system.

Still, here’s what intrigues me: Why don’t they just ask, you know, God? I mean, he supposedly authored the thing, dictating to human scribes, which seems a fairly inefficient way for an omnipotent author to go about his business, but there you are. But it seems to me this is a prime opportunity for God to put in an appearance and make his editorial desires known. After all, if the Bible is God’s inerrant Word, then doesn’t screwing with it in any way run the risk of spreading a completely botched version of God’s message, one that could lead more people to perdition and woe than salvation and grace? I mean, it seems like God ought to be more — oh, what’s that idiotic term — proactive here? I mean, he sure was with that whole Flood thing. I’d think making sure his Bible was error-free would be at least as important, you know?

Ing asked: So why don't they remove the self refuting stuff like the Chariots of Iron? You'd think they'd want to rid themselves of that criticism fodder.As I understand it, they tried that to some degree with the original publication of the NIV and in the process simply highlighted them instead of removing them. It's especially apparent when one compares it to other versions. I could be mistaking this with another version of the bible though; there have been several published in recent decades.